


Another Empire

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: AU, Fusion, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blake and Avon meet long before TWB...with notes on Freedom Party operations. God help me, this must be described as a High School AU (Public School Version). It's also a fusion of "Another Country," where Public School Revolutionary meets Would-Be Decadent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Empire

_Today, today I had a feeling  
A miracle would happen.  
I know now, I was right._

1.  
Blake swept the torch around the boathouse. He had only been a prefect for three weeks, and took it very seriously. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Avon Minor?"

"What I think I'm doing is playing my latest piano concerto to great éclat from a packed house in Heroes of the Federation Hall. Unfortunately I am tone-deaf and forced to crouch in this unsalubrious location merely to smoke a cigarette. And I'm not Avon Minor any more, Brian went up to The House last term."

"Well, you're not supposed to be here, are you?"

"That is its sole charm." He raised one eyebrow and extended the cigarette to Blake, who frowned and batted the smoke away with the hand that wasn't holding the torch.

"And get your hair cut."

"I think you'll find that my hair is--just--within accepted parameters. Who are you, by the way? I try to keep track of all you hearties, but you all merge imperceptibly into one another. Of course in some cases I'd pay not to see you merge."

"Blake," said Blake, who never forgot a face.

Avon sat down crosslegged on the floor of the boathouse to finish his cigarette. "Ah, yes, You. You're..." (he edited out "below me") "in the fifth form, aren't you? That's young to be a prefect."

Blake nodded. "Oh, well, it's just that I care a lot about this school and want to do my best for it. I'll be here for another couple of years, then I'll go to a crammers' to prep for the Diplomatic exam," Blake said. "So that means I'm on the Classical side. It seems pointless, doesn't it? Learning a load of dead languages instead of something useful. What's your ambition, then?"

"Apart from being the sort of person of whom people like you reflexively say 'And get your hair cut'?" One more term here, then I shall be rewarded for my favorite thing--making an Exhibition of myself--and then I'll read Maths and Computer Sciences. Really, I don't see how you could not like Latin. It's so elegantly simple, yet logical. You must be: {{bloody thick}} easily distracted."

"I don't know much about computers--I'm not one of those furiously brainy types like you--but, well, I like Maths, especially the Applied sort, you can tell that it can accomplish something."

2.  
There wasn't precisely a rule against it, but it wasn't done. So Blake felt some trepidation when he crossed the Quad to another house and knocked on the door of Avon's study three days later. The study was a small room, quite a bit of which was occupied by a homespun-looking computer. Blake gazed at it with interest; he had hardly ever been at such close range with one before. "About that Latin prep..." Blake said.

Avon turned his chair around to face Blake. "Yes, all right. Just leave it on the desk and I'll do it after I finish these equations, then bring it around tonight. Same place as before."

"I wouldn't...I didn't mean...I wouldn't let someone else do my prep for me, but I'd be awfully grateful if you were to help me out with it" .

"One wonders how grateful," Avon said. "Inadequately, almost certainly. All right, sit down. No, don't bother with that dictionary, I have a better one of my own."

An hour later, Blake said, "Thanks, that was awfully helpful. You're good at explaining things--I expect it's because you don't mind showing that you think I'm an idiot."

Avon waved his hand, magnanimously.

"What's your first name, then? Mine's Roj."

"I know. You can call me James, if you like...Daisy."

3.  
"With a girl? You never!" Blake said. He sat down on the edge of a rowboat. The boat, sinking a little into the water, splashed at him, so he sat down inside the boat.

"I twice," Avon said smugly. "In fact, twice apiece on two discrete occasions. That's with an -ete," he said, with a faint touch of remorse.

"Pull the other one, it plays a tune. Where would you meet a girl?"

"A shopgirl. In the chemists' shop. It was pleasant afternoon, so I wrote myself an exeat..." Avon said, standing up near the sharp end of the boat. He was his own best customer for cigarettes and French novels, but he did all right on chocolates, teddy bears (for the more affluent elements in the Junior School, who also provided a ready market for the cigarette cards) and pictorial pornography (for himself, he preferred the stuff in his diary).

"How'd you do that?"

"Our elders and betters exhibit a delightful naivete about the properties of computer networks. And adolescents, for that matter. I could teach you how to do it in five minutes. Look, do you want to hear this or not? It's already happened to me, so I don't give a monkey's toss if I tell you."

Blake leaned back, resting his head against the seat of the rowboat. "What would a monkey toss, then? A banana? Doesn't seem like much of a threat."

"What a dear innocent child it is," Avon said.

"Oh!" Blake said, blushing. "What was it like, then?"

"You'll like it," Avon reassured him. "It's simple."

"*Elegantly* simple, or just simple?"

"All right, I concede you the elegance."

"Did she have nice clothes?" Blake asked.

"I can't say that I noticed."

"Well, you know, she must have been a Gamma or a Delta. I mean, do girls like that earn enough to buy themselves nice dresses? I suppose they get enough to eat, I hope so."

"The scouts here are chosen for their repulsiveness even to the most cruelly sexually deprived adolescent, and they don't seem emaciated. Rather the reverse. Oh, why talk about depressing ordinary people? Glamorous, glorious people are much more interesting." Avon lit a cigarette, then reached into his pocket and handed Blake a couple of wrapped peppermints, which were promptly consumed. Blake nodded (his mouth too full of peppermints to speak).

"Simple falconry," Avon said. "I am accustoming you to take things from me and put them in your mouth."

"Avon, you're the frozen limit," Blake said.

4\.   
"Look here, Avon," Blake said. "I looked up your name in the class list. It isn't James at all, it's Kerr."

"I didn't say it was, quite, I said you could call me that. Considering that you're bigger than I am, I don't suppose I could stop you calling me whatever you liked."

"Honestly!" Blake said, stretching out and using his blazer as a pillow to cushion his neck against the edge of the seat. "Thanks for the books." (Avon told him that at the second-hand bookshops he frequented, Banned Books were two-a-penny if they were political; the real money was in the pornography, everybody wanted that.) "Been out to see that girl again, then?" Blake asked, not sure whether he was requesting journalism or another chapter in a serial.

"No, I packed it in," Avon said. "For aught I know, she's a perfectly decent girl, so if I kept hanging about she'd have to persuade herself she was in love with me, so why make her miserable for nothing?"

"If you like girls, I don't see why you're always trying it on with me," Blake said. "You know that's not going to get you anywhere."

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp. Blake, if I wanted to pull you, you'd be pulled," Avon said, his voice ringing with the crystal clarity he reserved for moments of particular insincerity He stretched out his hand toward the blazer (which, when unrolled, displayed multiple house colors). "Which d'you prefer, then, rugby or cricket?"

"Oh, football, of course!" Blake said. His eyes glowed with enthusiasm, and he sat up in the boat.

"But it wouldn't be fair to imply that you hate cricket, would it?"

5.  
"What you said about cricket last time," Blake said, sitting down next to Avon. Water squished as the rowboat sank down a little beneath their weight. "You don't have to like something to be good at it, you know. And then you have to do things because other people expect it of you."

"Why?" Avon said. "Just look at how I've been able, with comparatively little effort--although great native endowments--to arrange things just as I like."

"Well, it makes you look slack," Blake said. "I mean, you're in the Upper Sixth, and you haven't so much as got house colors in lacrosse."

"I never do athletics," Avon said. "The Games Master is under the impression that my lungs are shot and I've got one leg shorter than the other because of a bout of dengue fever contracted on a tropical plantation planet."

"Why would he believe a load of bo---of codswallop like that?"

"Read it in my file, I suppose."

"You have it easy, don't you? But I wouldn't want to be you, I'd like to do things that are important, that make things better for everybody and not just for me."

"I can't see why," Avon said. "They wouldn't bother to do the same for you."

Blake turned his back on Avon and opened one of the books Avon brought back from town. "Lenin said that when the Revolution comes, the capitalists will sell the workers the rope to hang them with," he said a few minutes later, through the peppermints.

"I should hope so," Avon said, looking up from his copy of "The Stones of Venice." (that had been a snip, it wasn't even banned). "Where else are you going to pawn off your inferior-quality rope? Certainly not for hanging rebels, you want something adequate for that."

Blake trailed his hand into the cold, brackish water. He splashed some of it on Avon's nicely starched white shirt. "God, sometimes you get right up my nose. Sometimes I've got half a mind to tell your Housemaster that you lurk around here every night."

"Half a mind would be a drastic improvement. You'd have to be here to see me, and if you were going to report me you should have done it ages ago. I should think you have a greater motive to keep your mouth shut than I do, because you've got more to lose," Avon said. "When it comes to unnatural vice--if I ever get to practice any at this rate--well, anyone can see this place is a hotbed of cold rowboats, but as far as I can tell you're the only politico."

6.  
Nicholas Kelmsley-Beers, enjoying the pangs of dispriz'd love, was cheered up by the sight of a letter from his older brother, then sternly reminded himself that his situation was too grave for mere cheering-up.

"Dear Nick," the missive read (or rather, its relevant parts read; the portions dealing with, e.g., cricket, Julian Kelmsley-Beers' financial problems, and canine and equine matters at their ancestral seat are not reproduced here), "Well, so what? If he won't have you, lots of other chaps will. But I suppose that won't cut any ice with you. Your Avon must be the cadet of the one who's up here. But this one is normal as fuck and fraffly hearty. Only thing they've got in common is being good-looking (although they don't look a bit alike) and impressed with themselves. Our one's a dreadful tuft-hunter so perhaps his kid brother is too. A bit of headed paper and he's anybody's. Anyway, my dear brother, offer him something Blake won't give him. Often, you will find that the way to a man's heart is through your arse."

7.  
It was not a particularly nice day; by the time he completed his various errands, Avon was nearly wet through and shivering. He ducked into the nearest doorway. It turned out to be a chip shop, so he went inside, drank a cup of sweet beige tea, and was going to order something to nibble on when he thought that Blake (a growing lad) would enjoy a fish supper as an after-dinner snack. {{Kids that age are always hungry}} he thought.

Avon calculated that if he walked back to school quickly, the food would at least be warm. He checked his wristchron--yes, Blake would probably be in his study doing prep, and could be lured out into the boathouse. And then--he was aware of a crackling tension, a feeling that this commonplace day would be very special. He certainly worked hard enough to be fey in the conventional sense of the term; perhaps he was, a little, in the original Scottish sense as well.

"Thanks," Blake said. "But I don't see why we can't eat it here."

"It's--the boathouse is special. It's ours."

"The Governors of the school wouldn't agree with you. Oh, all right."

Once they were settled, and the contents of the parcel consumed, Avon picked up the torch, flicked it on, and created a tender sweep of chiaroscuro around Blake's face. "Sometimes I think you're the most beautiful boy I've ever seen," he said. "Other than in a mirror, of course."

Blake hardly heard him. There was something leafed in with the newspapers wrapping the fish and chips. As soon as Blake touched the paper--before he saw it-a premonition ripped through him. He could tell that it was something important. Something awesome. Keeping his back turned to Avon, Blake teased the flyer out from the layers of newsprint.

NO BLOOD FOR CRYSTALS! It said in big black letters on a shrieking crimson background. LABOR GRADES OF ALL WORLDS UNITE! DO NOT GO TO OTHER PLANETS TO FIGHT UNJUST WARS! JOIN THE FREEDOM PARTY AND FIGHT FOR JUSTICE HERE ON EARTH!

For Blake, the world almost seemed to stop. {{Then I'm not alone}} he thought. {{Of course not. There are others like me. I should have known. I should have had faith.}}

Avon held his breath, and reached a hand, fingertips brushing Blake's distracted shoulder. {{And now it's all beginning}} he thought. {{Now. Now.}} He pulled a little at Blake's shoulder. Blake turned around. Avon felt that he was falling, falling forever, until his mouth touched Blake's and until he could kiss him, the dissolving sweetness was like nothing he had ever felt.

8.  
"I'm here to join the Party," Blake said, in a small room that had been some difficulty to find. "You can ask Comrade Milton at the fish shop to vouch for me."

"Toff like you?"

"I can't help how I was born, can I?"

"Been to any meetings, then?"

"Yes--the general meeting on Tuesday. They let me stay for the indoctrination special interest group meeting afterwards as well.."

"No, don't TELL me your surname," Comrade Dalloway said, updating the ledger and preparing to write out a Party membership card.. "'Cos if I don't know, they can't get it out of me, yeah?"

Blake stopped himself from shivering.

"Just tell me the first letter of it." Comrade Dalloway's real name was Dooley, his predecessor as Division Secretary--when he was still alive, of course--gave him this one out of some daft book or other.

"B," Blake said.

"Right! You'll be Bootles, then." {{Ruddy Alphas, what did they think they were playing at?}}

Blake considered this unfair, but it hardly seemed sporting to complain.

9.  
After a solid week when Blake was either climbing out windows to get to Party meetings, at Party meetings, climbing back in windows, or doing his prep, Avon decided that his time was far too valuable to waste in a moldy old boathouse hanging about waiting for someone who wasn't very interesting anyway.

10.  
At half-term, Avon was invited to stay at Plaizaunce, where Kelmsley-Beers was able to provide an actual bed and a pot of cold cream. Neither of the last-named in the series proved quite adequate to the demands placed on them, but the first-named were adaptable lads.

11.  
Blake told his parents that he was spending half-term with Avon, and went off to Freedom Party training camp. He was the only Alpha there, and he was much envied for the confidence around weapons that his Officers' Training Corps sessions had given him. Blake was proud to find that he had read almost as many banned books as Comrade Whittaker, who taught the Revolutionary Literature class, although he was ashamed to realize that some of the Labor Grade comrades could scarcely read at all.

Just before the end of the session, Blake was summoned to a special meeting with the Central Committee member responsible for indoctrination. "You're going to study engineering," Comrade Gramine told him.

"Well, no, I'm going in for the Diplomatic," Blake said.

"It's not up to you any more, it's a matter of Party discipline."

"Now, see here, I'm fifteen years old..."

"You're a big lad for your age, then."

"And I don't get to pick and choose."

"You'll have to do things that are a lot harder before you're through. You'll think of something. You'd better."

"Why engineering, then?"

"You do believe what the Party teaches, don't you?"

Blake nodded--it was easier than saying,"Well, yes and no, depending on which bit...I just want to do what's right and the way things are clearly isn't right at all."

"So then, our victory is a historical inevitability. So when we win--if we're alive to see it that is, suppose if we aren't it doesn't matter what we did for a living anyway--then the liberated People are going to be dancing in the streets with joy, yeah? Their oppressors will be the first against the wall, and revolutionary justice will be exacted. Then after that, when the people come in from the streets and put on the electric kettle, then something had damn well better happen. If it doesn't--if someone hasn't sorted out things like trams and jobs and money that doesn't have faces that you want to spit on, on 'em--then we're going to be the second against the wall and the People will be taken in by the counter-revolutionary elements like a sow returning to her mire."

At Party summer school and a little while afterwards, Comrade Rosewreath--something of the ideological equivalent of a grass widow--was glad to share a few episodes of elegant simplicity with the enthusiastic young recruit. Her husband was so often in meetings, and seldom came home before two in the morning. At least, unlike many of her friends' husbands, he didn't stagger home drunk and demand his Rights. Perhaps he had unreliable tendencies.

Blake thought she was lovely and hoped he made her happier instead of sadder.


End file.
